Policing the plains : $b being the real-life record of the famous Royal North-West Mounted PoliceMacBeth, R. G. (Roderick George)
History
Policing the plains : $b being the real-life record of the famous Royal North-West Mounted Police
MacBeth, R. G. (Roderick George)
Northwest, Canadian -- History; Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Similarly Inspector J. W. Phillips and Sergeant A. H. Joy made a patrol
from Haileybury in Northern Ontario to the Belcher Islands in the
sub-Arctic, taking seventy-five days and covering nearly two thousand
miles, arrested an Eskimo named Tukatauk for killing a man named
Ketanshauk, but the coroner's jury were unanimous in saying that
Ketanshauk was "killed for the common good and safety of the tribe."
Phillips saw the force of this verdict as reasonable from the point of
view of the Eskimos and was satisfied with the opportunity to give them
some appropriate instruction in law and morals. One other case was
followed up by Phillips at the same time with somewhat the same result.
In 1920 Staff-Sergeant S. G. Clay, Constable E. H. Cornelius and
Constable J. Brockie left Herschell Island and established the most
northerly outpost of the Force 65 miles east of the mouth of the
Coppermine River. The isolation of this post may be judged by the fact
that the nearest post office is at Fort Macpherson over 600 miles away
as the crow flies and the nearest telegraph office is at Dawson, over
1,000 miles distant. Here the Union Jack flies in the Arctic breeze and
here revenue is collected for the Dominion from traders and trappers who
venture north in schooners to ply their occupation. Sergeant Clay and
his men made constant patrols to the Coppermine, to Bernard Harbour and
Victoria Land, to Bathurst Inlet and Kent Peninsula with their dogs. The
question of supplies of food for themselves and dogs was always pressing
and at Fort Norman on the return journey there was such a shortage that
the whole party had to go to Willow Lake for a month's fishing and
hunting to lay in a safe supply. About 20 miles east of Cape Barrow this
patrol found a tribe whom the police had not yet met. This gave the
opportunity for more instruction, and Clay opines "that with the advent
of the missionary and other aids to civilization" the wrongs done in
ignorance by these people will cease.
I have already spoken of the oilfields in the Fort Norman district, to
which at the time of this writing there is a rush of people who see in
their own imaginations such roads to wealth that they miss seeing the
dangers of the way through these remote regions. But the Mounted Police,
under the general charge of Superintendent G. L. Jennings, an
experienced northerner himself, have made stringent regulations as to
entry into the district which will protect the foolhardy from their own
folly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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